How to Think Like a Marketer When Life Coaching

Making a good difference in the lives of others is the driving force behind most coaches' pursuit of a career in the field.

Your success as a coach in reaching that goal will depend on two variables. First, your competence and success as a coach; second, the number of people whose lives you change by providing your services. The second consideration is the main topic of this paper.

Coaches not only help their clients, but they can also improve their own lives in the process. These aims are mutually supportive, in fact.

The ethical importance of marketing is often overlooked by many businesspeople, even coaches. By doing so, they set themselves, their company, and their customers up for failure.

Now you can start making money as a coach. How efficiently you run your company is totally up to you. There are coaches who are extremely successful (in terms of the number of clients they have, their money, and the results they achieve) and coaches who are barely making ends meet. There is no difference in coaching ability between these two extremes, only in approach. No matter how skilled a coach you are, your services will be useless if no one is prepared to pay for them.

So, what sort of outlook does one need to have to be a winning coach?
A winning coaching mentality:
Prioritizes the wants and needs of potential and existing customers.
seeks ways to facilitate clients' success;
Shows compassion for customers and potential buyers;
Doesn't restrict the scope of service provided to customers, and
Provides ethical guidance.
To be a winning trainer, you need to think like a marketer.

There are many coaches out there who believe that marketing is unethical and even "leading." They find it too salesy and unsettling. We'll break down for those trainers the practical and moral justifications for marketing.

Moral Supremacy

There is a massive (and rising) population in need of coaching in today's world. These people are prospects for coaching services. These possible customers have outlined detailed plans for how they plan to improve their lives and what obstacles they want to conquer in order to do so.

You owe it to these individuals as a coach to do everything you can to help them. Once they start making use of your services, you may start helping them. Marketing connects what potential customers want with what you can do to give it to them.

When a marketer fails to deliver on a promise made to a customer, they have committed an unethical act. Either intentionally or unintentionally, you have misled your client here.

Given that potential clients are looking for guidance in reaching certain objectives, coaches have a moral duty to point them in the direction of the most competent professional in the field. To do this, coaches should provide prospective clients with complete, detailed, and honest descriptions of their services, areas of expertise, years of experience, client testimonials, and other information on how they've helped others with similar needs and how hiring them will benefit the client. Or, to put it another way, to engage in marketing.

Critical to the Economy

Commercial success depends on marketing's ability to connect customers who want one thing with experts who can help them get it. It marks you as a possible resource for prospects with certain requirements. People who are interested in learning more about coaches have already demonstrated:

One is that they have personal aspirations and obstacles they want to one day conquer.

A coach is someone who has the knowledge and experience to help them.

That they are prepared to put money into it.

Coaches must recognize the significance of the aforementioned

As we discussed before, instructors typically adhere to one of two marketing philosophies.

One school of thought characterizes marketing as aggressive and persuasive. They assume that the goal of marketing is to actively persuade consumers to change their behavior. Or, more precisely, that you might coerce someone into doing something they would rather not. The term "Influencing Paradigm" was coined to describe this way of thinking.

The second school of thought holds that potential customers are those who have recognized the need to initiate change within themselves. They've decided a coach will help them grow and adapt. They understand that the prospect has drawn a logical connection between their wants and the ways in which they hope to get those needs met. The Service Paradigm is the name we've given to this way of thinking.

These two points of view are completely opposed to each other. The first portrays the prospect as a passive victim who is coerced into using the service, while the second portrays the prospect as an active seeker of coaching services who is capable of identifying their own needs.

It is essential for you, as a coach, to think in terms of the second paradigm. You won't be able to help your clients in an ethical manner unless you do so. This is essential if you want to establish yourself as a credible coach and grow your business.

If you think like a service provider, you'll know the following things to do to help your customers succeed:

To attract customers, you need to get the word out about what you have to offer them.

Realize that your position as a coach and trusted advisor puts you in a great position to better understand what your client requires from you in order to help them succeed.

Show concern for your customers and work to meet their requirements by providing a range of services and goods.

Consider the client's intelligence and capacity for making sound judgments.

To avoid disappointing customers by providing fewer options than they need, you shouldn't try to predict their preferences.

Serves as an ethical guide in all situations

When you adopt the Service Paradigm marketing approach, you'll see that marketing opens up numerous doors for you to help your customers and grow your coaching business. When your goals and those of your customers align, you create a situation in which everyone involved benefits.

We'll go into more depth on how to create a marketing mindset and a service paradigm in a subsequent issue.

While working toward a goal or set of goals, it's common for people to want to enhance some aspect of their lives.